


pushing up daisies, pulling down dirt

by DisposablePaperCup



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Death, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Good Dog Sumo (Detroit: Become Human), Graphic Depictions of Illness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Not Beta Read, Pandemics, Sad Ending, Zombies, the wall of tags was annoying me so i got rid of some
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27020077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisposablePaperCup/pseuds/DisposablePaperCup
Summary: The first few instances were labeled as some new pandemic going around, though if you asked a doctor and did manage to get a straight answer, they’d tell you there’s no known virus that makes you cough up a viscous, blue liquid like it’s blood.
Relationships: Connor & CyberLife Tower Connor | RK800-60, Hank Anderson & Connor, Josh & Markus & North & Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Kara & Luther & Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	pushing up daisies, pulling down dirt

**Author's Note:**

> Keep in mind this story deals with violence, implied suicide, pandemics ( especially relevant), illness, and zombies, so keep in mind if youre squeamish with that
> 
> PLEASE dont read if you arent comfortable with that stuff

The world ended in an anticlimax to end all anticlimaxes.

There was no dramatic mushroom cloud explosion. No rush of screaming mobs and riots in the streets. No pan out to a cliffhanger black screen of credits. It was slow. People didn’t start running for the hills the second everything was knocked out of orbit. (Some did, but those are limited to paranoid doomsday preppers and conspiracy theorists. Those ones didn’t actually make it all that far.) 

The first few instances were labeled as some new pandemic going around, though if you asked a doctor and did manage to get a straight answer, they’d tell you there’s no known virus that makes you cough up a viscous, blue liquid like it’s blood. 

In the first three days, fifty-four people died. The bodies were burned. The doctors were insistent on that.

In the second week, the number bumped up to fifty thousand. It was getting harder to keep up with cremation and harder to keep people from being exposed.

The hospitals were full up by the fourth week, shops closed and stretches of once-vibrant civilisation resembling miniature ghost towns. By the fourth week a group of ten people was likely to have at least one person infected in it. By the fourth week the world started to panic. 

By the fifth week, dead people weren't so dead anymore.

\---

If you asked Hank Anderson what the end of the world was like, he’d tell you ‘bloody’. 

Working in homicide had perks. Morbid ones, that is. Not really perks, actually, just dead people. Mainly those where he had the pleasure of seeing a flushed, anemic dead body every other week, with hysteric family members claiming the victim just ‘fainted at the dinner table and didn’t sit up’. 

It was a little clearer once they were told these same victims had been spewing dark, blue blood for days beforehand and no poison showed up in autopsy.

He stopped working those cases once his son Cole dropped dead over his grilled cheese.

\---

For the twins, Connor and Colton Stern, the build-up to the end of the world amounted to a great big hunk of ‘boring’.

Connor had been working on getting promoted to detective and Colton was busy running a woodworking shop when the ‘pandemic’ really started kicking off. They were smart. Masks, quarantine, the whole nine-yard. Days were spent with monotonous games of Monopoly and Uno and practicing coin tricks, in Connor's case.

Nothing spectacular ever happened to them. 

They had to board the windows when dead people started scratching at the door.

\---

Markus Manfred and his friends, Simon, Josh, and North equated the end of the world to ‘impactful’ at best. ‘Devastating’ at worst.

For them, there were still things to be done, still people to help. Equal rights activists were prime targets for the virus, so it was no surprise when Simon got sick. 

It was a much bigger surprise when he showed up at his funeral with a bullet hole in his leg and someone else’s skin in his teeth.

\---

Connor and Colton braved the streets on week six, when their supplies started running low. They were armed with a spiked baseball bat, a shotgun with a bag full of shells, and as much grit they could muster.

They took out seventeen zombies in a desperation-filled scouting trip gone wrong, blood and gristle permanently staining their clothes a deep, curdled blue. Colton took out a zombie when his twin slipped and was tackled, slamming a shotgun round into the thing’s head and raining navy blood onto his brother’s face. 

Connor was sure he would never get the scent of rotting flesh out of his hair.

They were separated. Of course they would be. Statistically speaking, it was inevitable. 

A coin was tossed across the bleeding blue battlefield. It was an act of promise, of desperation, of fear. The older twin tossed to the younger, the resolute passed to the bold. 

Connor tossed to Colton.

~~It landed on heads~~.

They didn’t quite have time to say a proper goodbye.

\---

Markus, Josh, and North roved about in a small pack with other survivors, armed with duct-tape spears and as many supplies as they dare carry. 

Markus was the leader. He was strong and smart, and was the only one that seemed to be able to shoot down a zombie without feeling a roiling, nauseous bolt of shame and guilt in his gut. He didn’t correct them, didn’t tell them that he curled up some nights with someone’s face frozen in post-mortem agony screaming in his head. 

They called him their leader.

He wished he didn’t have to be.

\---

Kara, Luther, and Alice Williams spent the end of the world at the lake for a weekend. During that time their friends and family were already dead. They didn't know.

Luther got the news when watching television as the girls splashed in the lake. He sat, shaky and pale, as every channel played footage of the carnage. Blood painted the streets blue, bodies covered haphazardly with gasoline and left to burn in the streets.

Kara got the news from Luther, and cried, pale and trembling, in his arms as they watched the news over and over again. The calls to her family went unanswered.

Alice got the news from a set of tearful, terrified parents, desperately trying to hold a strong face for their little girl.

Luther came home with ten bags of canned food and a shotgun after the first week of staying inside. 

Nobody questioned it. They all knew why.

\---

Hank moved slowly, but consistently, and always - _always_ \- armed to the teeth. Sumo was a hulking, furry mass of a dog, and could ram his body into a zombie as many times as it took until it stopped moving without complaint.

He was as careful as possible, never setting up a permanent base in case the zombies took a liking to his particular haunt. 

It turned out not to matter when Sumo was nearly mauled by a crawler not long after week eight. 

They stayed in one place for a while, after that.

Cole’s body was dug up and burned, though not before the infection started digging into his bones, blue and sour like curdled milk. His veins were full of an oily grease-like pus, and Hank lost his lunch in the grass more than once once the fire started spouting appropriately scented smoke into the air.

He figured he should’ve been grateful that he doesn't have to pay for alcohol anymore.

\---

Connor met with Hank during week ten, three days after Colton was forced to flee with three, four, five zombies hot on his heels. 

He often tried not to think about how Colton only had two bullets left.

Hank was dismissive of the kid right away. He was too naive, too optimistic that his brother would come back with his organs all in the right places and his blood the same color as theirs’. Connor was logical, cool-headed, and rational, in every instance except when it involved his brother. 

Hank didn’t care for the kid all that much. Of course, that didn’t say anything for his dog.

Connor took to Sumo like a fish took to water, stating, “I like dogs,” in the most serious voice Hank had ever heard come from a scrawny, twiggish, bleeding-heart-empathetic twenty-one year old’s mouth. It was frankly ridiculous.

Hank didn’t want to admit that he needed ‘ridiculous’ right then. 

They stayed together for about a week. And, as loathe as Hank would be to admit it, Connor had grown on him. Aside from his likeable personality, the kid was useful, almost inhumanly fast, and had once managed to throw off an ambitious crawler with little less than a few scratches - something the kid attributed to his aunt Amanda’s self-defense lessons.

Hank didn’t mention how these ‘self-defense’ lessons sounded a lot less pleasant than Connor tried to make them out to be.

Day eight of travelling together, Connor mentioned his cousin, Nathan, lived in the area they were passing through. He seemed a lot less optimistic about “Nines’” fate than he did his brother’s. 

He didn’t push it, but Hank could see the way that accepting the logical answer weighed the kid down like a draping, leaden cloak. Hank reasoned that there was no harm in checking, and they could always meet up again if they stayed going in the same direction.

He couldn’t help but feel like he was sending another kid to his death as Connor walked away.

\---

Markus’ group, deemed ‘Jericho’ by the survivors, made their home in an abandoned dockyard, in a ship by the same name. 

They moved carefully, taking scouting parties of a few people at a time to avoid unwanted attention. North and Josh served as Markus’ advisors, and he himself as the survivors’ leader. 

The largest scouting trip they planned was to a strip mall, where zombies would no doubt be running rampant but canned goods were likely more plentiful than there had been before.

Their plan was as airtight as they could get it. North helped with distributing weapons and Josh distributed dedicated tasks. Markus himself raised the spirits of all involved and reassured them of their cause worth fighting for. 

They didn’t account for the bulging, bloated corpse of a body-builder to be there, gorged on human and zombie remains alike.

Markus lost an eye that day, and four survivors lost their lives.

\---

Luther was their rock, their guardian. Kara told Alice so in a story one night as the little girl lay burdened with nightmares. 

They kept moving, abandoning the lake house and stumbling their way through the world that had replaced the old one like a shoddy, blue smeared copy while they sat in ignorance.

Luther kept his shotgun on him at all times. The first time he used it was when a crazed man, high on power from experimenting on zombies with little intent of finding a cure, targeted their family for his tests.

Zlatko's body was ripped apart by the very hoard he created.

Kara settled for a handgun, having too little strength for a bat or the agility for a blade. She used it twice, shooting zombies out of desperation only when Alice was threatened. 

She didn't like to think about the people they used to be. Didn't like to think about the delicately half-sane man named Ralph that threatened her little girl with a knife.

~~She put a bullet in his~~ head.

Alice had no weapon. She was armed with a stuffed fox and her small figure, though Kara and Luther ensured she'd never be close enough to a zombie to have to resort to dodging and hiding away.

They moved as a family. A unit. Hiding and staying silent rather than fighting their way through.

They tried not to think of the people they'd left behind.

\---

Colton met Hank at the end of week twelve, and the kid nearly shot him through the head until the other man explained why he had shouted Connor’s name when he saw him. 

They only stayed together for a day and a night, Colton obviously the more reserved and serious of the brothers, if not the rougher one, who snapped and bit scathingly whenever Hank got too close.

He sized Hank up like a fighter might size up an opponent, calculative and careful. Sumo wasn’t as interested in this brother.

The kid was gone by the next morning. The only reason Hank was sure a crawler hadn’t dragged Colton off in his sleep was the fact that he himself was still alive and the existence of a note on a crumpled blue post-it note, left on Colton’s sleeping spot. 

‘Off to find Connor - Colt’.

The writing on the other side was smudged, erased and re-erased. 

‘W-ek S-x -> M-nop-ly: C-nno-, 4-, -0, 51, Col-on, -9 60’

Boardgame scores.

He sat there for a long while, just staring at that simple little scrap of blue paper.

\---

Connor met Markus when fleeing a hoard, spiked bat encrusted with brain matter and weeping blue blood in a steady trail. Jericho was almost afraid to welcome him in when such a feral, untamed aura flitted about him like a persistent cloud.

They were afraid of the way his hair was matted down with blue in patches, so thick and crusted there that it could very well have stemmed from his own head.

They were afraid of the way his clothes could very well have been a pure, snow white once. No matter the color they were now.

~~They were blue.~~

Or, they could be afraid of how Connor was all too happy to stretch his head into the lingering cloud of a desperate man's ferocious will and breathe it right in. 

Markus simply looked at Connor with sad eyes, like recognizing like, and welcomed him in.

For who was he to judge a desperate man when he himself was one?

After a long while, when the shock and adrenaline wore to a dull, probing ache, Connor explained. He told them about his stubborn spitfire of a brother, about a lonely man and his dog, about his distant aunt and his cousin, about his mother and his father.

~~About himself.~~

There was a woman there, hair ripped out in a desperate move after it was’ snagged by a zombie who couldn’t seem to keep its hands to itself’ she’d joked. Connor didn’t find it amusing.

The woman replaced her hair with wires, thick as dreadlocks and lacing atop her head in a veritable crown of broken metal thread and rubber. 

_You’re lost_ , she’d told him, _you’re looking for something._

_Yes,_ he wanted to say, _my family_.

He said nothing.

The woman continued, dark eyes full of understanding as they reflected the stars, _you’re looking for yourself_.

Connor left Jericho a day later. He didn’t look back.

\---

Hank met with Connor again two weeks after their first meeting, long after Colton had come and gone, long after Hank met the zombie who nearly ripped off his leg in a bloody haze, long after Connor had come to Jericho, battered and blue and with a feral glint in his eyes.

Long after Sumo had broken his leg and died.

The kid cried for an hour after that news was delivered, and Hank couldn’t help but comfort him as best he could.

He didn’t think himself very good at comfort.

They stayed together after that.

\---

Alice first used a gun against the shuddering, lumbering corpse of her father. 

His skin was a pale, deathly hue, and yellow tinged his eyes. Blue blood leaked down his front, mixed with red crystalline dust that the little girl sobbed at seeing.

Luther was outside, scouting the area before they holed up in the abandoned house.

The house wasn't abandoned.

Kara was thrown bodily against the wall. Once. Twice. Her eyes were dazed and she weakly gasped for breath.

Alice begged, pleaded, cried, and Kara squirmed against the meaty fist that pinned her there. 

The little girl, driven by the rabid, feral fire of desperation, simply picked up the gun, as she'd seen her parents do time and time again, and fired.

Luther held them both until the sun rose, one hand on his gun, the resolute guardian.

~~Alice should have known he would find her. He always found her.~~

They always checked the house first after that.

\---

Markus met Kara's family not soon after Connor left. 

He saw a broken, struggling group, who clung to each other like lifelines, steadfast and loving.

They told him their stories. It was almost customary at this point. He let them stay as long as they needed, and he would never do anything different. 

Luther volunteered for scouting missions and Kara stubbornly insisted on helping the injured. Alice was content to stay by her mother's side.

He saw a family. They saw a savior.

He often wished they picked someone different to lead.

\---

Connor and Colton were reunited on a chill afternoon, where Hank hung back to make camp and rest.

For a while they simply stared, weeks of not seeing each other and now they both had guns poised at each other's chests.

Connor broke the shock first, calling his brother and running to his side.

They stood stock-still for a full minute. Two. Arms wrapped tightly around each other in a desperate, meaningless act.

Hank just raised a brow when two Connors returned to their little shelter. 

The brothers were twins, yes, but it was easier to see the differences side-by-side. Connor's hair was curlier and thicker, always full of energy even when still, and Colton held himself stiffer, with less freckles than his twin and a cold gaze.

Colton didn't ask about Sumo. He didn't need to. 

They caught up, exchanging stories and explaining where they'd been. Hank had already heard about Jericho, and Colton didn't have much to say, so Connor took the lead in catching his twin up to speed.

And if a single quarter exchanged hands, glinting in the moonlight, Hank didn't say a word. 

The unspoken promise was fulfilled.

\---

Kara served a dinner of canned vegetables with a tired smile their first night of being just a trio again.

They had to leave Jericho. It was a necessity. Kara's foster mother Rose lived further North, and might very well have been alive. She wanted to give Alice a grandmother.

Luther stayed up with a gun in his hands, constantly scanning the window outside with a methodic gaze.

Alice was sleeping, curled up in the corner where she could dart away and get to one of the two exits if need be. It was the safest spot for her.

Kara was in the bathroom, spilling blue blood into the bathtub. 

\---

Markus, North, and Josh's shouts could be heard through the ship as they hemmed and hawed.

People were getting sick without bites, without contact. They were cordoned off in a guarded section of Jericho, in rooms where blood ran blue and people cried as they lay dying.

Nobody knew how to help them.

North argued putting them out of their misery would be a mercy. It would keep their people from unnecessary danger, especially if there was nothing to do for the infected.

Josh wanted them to stay sectioned off while they found a cure. They were once people who had families, so they shouldn't just let them all keel over and die while watching idly. 

Markus just wanted the pain to stop.

He voted for a compromise. Those fully turned would have to be executed. Those dying would be spared in case a cure could be found.

Nobody was happy.

Nobody was ever happy.

\---

Connor started coughing blue four days after they began traveling as a group.

He was lethargic, sweating in the cold, and trembling as he passed his coin back and forth between his hands. He was boiling from the inside out and still felt like he'd swallowed a block of ice.

He knew the symptoms intimately. They wrapped around his spine like a constricting force, never quite enough to break him in two and still far too much.

He knew the symptoms.

Which was why he recognized them in his brother. 

\---

"Hm. It's cold out today. Hey, Con, do you want a blanket? You're shivering."

"..."

"Con?"

"Colton."

"Oh, full names. Okay. Are you upset with me? I promise you I didn't get any blood on your quarter from shooting zombies, don't worry."

" _Colton_."

"Yeah?"

"...if I… if I get bit-"

" _No._ I'm stopping you right there. We are not having this conversation. We are not doing a 'if I become a zombie you shoot me' thing. I'm not doing that."

"It's-Colt, just listen."

"I am listening, and you're being irrational. I'm not _shooting_ you. End of story."

"..."

"Connor, what is this really about?"

"Nothing."

" _Connor."_

" _Colton_."

"..."

"Fine. _Fine._ You don't want to talk, then don't talk. I'm just… I'm always going to be here to listen, you know that, right?"

"...yeah."

"Good."

"..."

"Hey, Colt?"

"Yeah, Con?"

"I love you."

"...Love you too, Con. Get some sleep."

"...Colt?"

"Yeah?"

"...be here when I wake up."

"I-Con-that's not-"

"..."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, I can do that."

"..."

"Good night, Connor."

"Night, Colton. Love you."

"...Love you too."

\---

There's a coin in Connor's bag. There's an inscription on it, stark against the cold gray metal, reading 'CS&CS. Ursa Major. Ursa Minor.'

It was Colton's idea, after they were taken to the observatory for their shared seventh birthday and Connor's eyes lit up with stars.

The younger brother silently watches, a brave sentry to the oldest. 

There's a book in Colton's bag. It's worn and brown and damaged from where he's read countless times, title unrecognizable down from where he's run a hand across the raised letters.

The people of Jericho are dying. Their leader is torn apart from the weight on his back and the blue seeping from his veins.

The family is dying. They hold each other as they choke on _blue, blue, blue_ , none willing to let go as they all succumb.

The older brother sleeps, unaware of the younger brother's gambit.

There's a revolver in Hank's bag. There's one bullet in it, metal and glinting and sharp in the barrel.

There are footprints in the snow, leading far, far into the woods.

There is a crack in the silence.

There was a bullet. 

There is a body.

The older brother wakes.

He cries.

There are two bodies.

The lonely man wakes. 

He cries.

He plays a dangerous game with a spare bullet and two bleeding blue bodies in the snow.

**Author's Note:**

> So i made myself fucking c r y
> 
> This is kind a covid vent? Anyways I read a silent hill/DBH fusion and I cant find it now but it made me fucking cry too so 
> 
> If it wasnt obvious Connor is rk800 51 and Colton is rk800 60 which i just threw in there as the monopoly scores for no reason other than why not
> 
> Okay bye i sleep


End file.
